A Clue! We're One Step Closer to Finding the Answer!

"Don't do it Gourry!" Lina yelled, plowing into him.

"Amelia, take them away from here!" Zelgadis ordered the princess.

The three girls ran, stumbling in the dark a few steps before Amelia cast a spell for light. Alyssa trembled, barely holding back her tears. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry Amelia, I just froze. I tried to move but I couldn't."

"It's ok Alyssa, we all freeze sometimes," the dark-haired girl said as soothingly as she could while they ran. The light went out and they sat huddled against a broad tree. Kassandra cried into her sister's shirt, holding her in a death grip with her small hands.

"I have to go back and help," Amelia said after a moment, looking back at the direction they had come. "You'll be fine. Stay quiet and we'll come back for you."

Alyssa stammered but couldn't put the words together to stop Amelia from leaving them. "I'll be back," the princess promised with a light-hearted smile. She was scared too but she had traveled with Lina Inverse before and she knew they could expect anything when traveling with the infamous sorceress.

"Gourry, listen to me!" Lina shouted at the feral man. "You've got to snap out of it!" Wham! She took the hilt of her sword to the blonde cranium and he fell. Zelgadis had a small sweat drop on the side of his head as he approached the sorceress and their fallen comrade.

"We should take cover and follow him back to where he came from," the stone man suggested. Amelia came up to them, slightly panting and looked at Gourry on the ground.

Lina nodded. "That's what we'll do. I wanna find out who did this 'cause no one messes with Gourry but me!"

Amelia hung her head and pointed back to where she had left the sisters. "We can't leave them by themselves."

"It's too dangerous to take them with us," Zelgadis said, folding his arms in a final decision. "Gourry might go anywhere before he returns to the person who kidnapped him and they wouldn't be able to keep up."

Amelia looked up at him, knowing he was right but still stubborn in her decision. "Mr. Zelgadis, I know as well as you do that I wasn't always able to keep up whenever we traveled together but you gave me a chance. Kassandra is just a child but Alyssa can protect her."

"Like she did tonight?" Zelgadis asked none to polite in tone.

"I've frozen plenty of times Mr. Zelgadis," the princess retorted. "Not everyone has fought Mazouku Lords like we have."

"They've come with us this far," Lina said staring at Gourry's figure in contemplation. "And they seem to be a magnet for Gourry."

"What do you mean Miss Lina?" Amelia asked.

"During the whole thing, Gourry only kept trying to attack them. And you Amelia because you were with them."

Zelgadis rubbed his stone chin thoughtfully. "The older girl did say that they had been attacked by a monster when we first met them. Amelia, go get them. If she can identify Gourry as the same being..."

"Then they'll have to come with us if we want to find out who's behind this," Lina finished.

Amelia headed towards the girls while Lina and Zelgadis stayed with Gourry. When the three returned, Lina was sitting beside the transformed swordsman while Zelgadis blended in with the trees as a lookout.

"Alyssa, I have to know," Lina asked the oldest girl, "Is he the monster you said attacked your village?"

The girl looked at Gourry and nodded silently. No one said anything for the longest time but then Lina asked another question, "Did you have anything with you when the attack happened?"

Alyssa began to shake her head no when Kassandra tugged on her sleeve and pulled out a little pendant she had kept hidden under her shirt.

"But that's just a totem," Alyssa said softly, "We all had one in the village; Except I lost mine during the attack."

"A totem?" Zelgadis asked from the shadows. "I've read that the first villages made carvings to represent the gods as a way to tell all the stories. Some scholars said that a powerful totem made to represent a god could even summon him, like Shabranigdo."

"Except that we already beat him," Lina reminded him, "and totems are so rare….can I see it?"

"Kass, will you let Lina see your pretty totem? She'll give it back," Alyssa said to the little girl beside her.

The dark-haired child nodded and walked over to Lina, holding out her totem pendant.

"My village is—was a small one. It hadn't changed very much from the time that it came together and these totems have been in our village since before my grandmother's mother was born."

The three sorcerers came together under Lina's illumination to study the pendant which Kassandra had not let go of.

"Lina," Zelgadis said.

"Yeah, I know," responded the sorceress.

They both looked back at Gourry's unconscious face. Moving closer to him for study, the small group took in his features. The swordsman has soft down-hair all over his face which had become squarer since they had last seen him. Lina carefully move his long hair away from his face for a better look. His ears had become longer and wider, almost fanning out. His nose looked as if he had ironed it flat against his face and his hands were now webbed and claw-like.

Amelia gasped and took a step back. "Mr. Gourry….he looks like…"

"He looks like a bat," Zelgadis finished for the princess. "More precisely, he looks like the kid's totem."